


Best Chances

by qualapec



Category: Rawhide (TV), The Last of Us
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, M/M, SO, The Last of Us is a zombie game, Zombies, please check the author's notes for more specific trigger warnings, some violence, trigger warning for death of a child
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-23
Updated: 2018-08-23
Packaged: 2019-07-01 10:29:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15772296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qualapec/pseuds/qualapec
Summary: "After the death of his wife, Gil Favor did his best to provide for his two daughters. He worked long hours on a ranch for little pay, but they were getting by. Until one terrible night, the Cordyceps Brain Infection, and fifteen long years." — This is my Rawhide "The Last of Us" AU. Please check the author notes for more detailed trigger warnings.





	Best Chances

**Author's Note:**

> Wow, I'm psyched I finished this. My writing dry spell has lasted for about a year. I recently watched "Rawhide" for the first time on a complete whim. I was just gonna watch a couple episodes, and then I watched more, and then I bought the DVDs, and now I'm almost done with the series. Oops. I'm really digging it. Didn't think this stage of my fandom life would be a 60yo cowboy show, but here we are—here I am, in the reeds, real messed up about my grayscale sons.
> 
> I also love: 1) horror, and 2) sad things, so of course the first fic I wrote needed to be a "Last of Us" AU. Got the idea during the "Boss's Daughters" episode, and since I had to think it, well, I needed to put it out there for everyone else.
> 
> This first chapter follows the game pretty closely. The next two will diverge immensely/not follow the main plot at all. It is tagged Gil Favor/Rowdy Yates, since that relationship and reading them as queer is really central to the way I approach those characters, BUT it's not a ship fic, so neither of them are necessarily safe. So again, please mind the warnings. There's also some background character death, so again, keep that in mind.
> 
> Trigger warnings: just in case anyone reading this is not familiar with TLOU, I wanted to make it clear that there's some child-death. I kept it off-screen here, but that is a component. There's also some warning for spousal abuse imagery. Lastly, there's the general violence/disaster/sickness that comes with a zombie fic.

Another long day, another late night.

Gil took a moment in the driveway to stretch his back, then bent his knees to ease some of the soreness out. He was maybe getting too old, but he wasn’t there yet. Some of the other men, the codgers, they had knee replacements, hips with rods old enough that they went into debt getting them. The house was dark, so he thought maybe the girls were already in bed and tried to be quiet as he knocked the dirt off his boots on the mat.

When he opened the door, though, that’s when he heard the steady, musical static of their old TV—the one with the big dark smudge through the entire lower righthand side. First, he felt a spike of irritation because it was past the girls’ bedtime. He knew he had a quick temper and he knew where that anger came from, but he didn’t ever want the girls to be on the receiving end. He took one of his deep, 12 Step breaths, and let himself enjoy being home, even if it was hard, even if it had been hard for years. The clock in the kitchen ticked away.

The last of his irritation faded when he walked into the family room. Gillian had fallen asleep with her head against the back of the couch, and Maggie was curled up around a throw pillow, her head resting against Gillian’s lap. The glow from the TV illuminated their blonde hair, still in the messy braids he’d helped tie that morning—it was some reality show, people slaving over stoves and mixing bowls, but the girls were sleeping through it.

Gil smiled, strode over to the remote and turned off the TV.

Behind him, Gillian grumbled and rubbed at her eyes. “Pa?”

“What are you two doing up?” He said, although it never came close to sounding like a criticism. That was the difference, between his girls and the ranch hands he managed.

Gillian looked surprised, shaking off the last bits of her nap and checking the clock on the wall. Her eyes went wide, and she cringed at Gil as Maggie yawned awake. Sleepily, she allowed Gil to brush her to the side, between him and Gillian, and she looked just a little cranky at being woken up.

“How was work?” Gillian said as he sank into the couch.

“Fine. But you two have school tomorrow,” Gil grumbled, running his hands through his hair. A layer of grit came off as he did. It just never ended. He was covered in dust—hay, dirt, manure. He’d need to get the girls off to school, then maybe shower in the morning if there was time. He was too tired to wash off the filth tonight.

“That bad, huh?” Maggie asked, and he smiled, squashing her close on instinct.

“Wait!” She giggled, and gently shoved him away. “I don’t wanna smell like cows!”

It was a joke, signaled by the laughter in her eyes, but his smile still dropped a fraction. He knew he smelled like the field and Jesus’s stable, he knew they were embarrassed. The bake sale, the parent-teacher conferences that their aunt Eleanor attended instead of their father because he knew he didn’t have time to get home and change into clothes that weren’t caked in mud.

“It was fine, just fine.” He stretched. “Gillian, Mags, why don’t you two hurry along to bed, yeah?”

“What about you, pa?”

He inclined his head in mock exasperation. “Let a man have a moment in his own house.” He turned the sound back on the TV. After some consideration, he asked, “Which one is this? I don’t think I seen it before.”

Maggie hugged his arm at the elbow, and snuggled in beside him, coaxing a long glance out of the corner of his eye. “German Chocolate Cake.”

“The contestant with the ah, pink hair. What happened to her?”

“Whipped cream disaster,” Gillian said, with utmost somber confidence, as if explaining a fatal car wreck. Gil shrugged. He’d seen worse disasters on the farm, but only just. Gillian settled onto the far arm of the couch, mesmerized by the TV.

“She’s cryin’.”

Gillian looked at him like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “It was a real bad accident.”

“Yeah, pa, someday you’ll come home and we’ll actually have baked you a cake.”

“Would certainly improve the smell of the house.”

“Your house.”

“Oh sure,” he said, “it’s my house when it’s filthy. That how it is?”

There was a commercial break, and he eyed how the girls had, successfully, settled practically right back into the positions they’d been in when he’d arrived, glued to the TV again, and noticeably still not in bed.

But then Maggie started snoring against his arm, and he saw Gillian’s head keep drooping. It was a quiet moment—a good, quiet moment at the end of a day full of yelling, and he couldn’t bring himself to break it up. Maybe that was the counter side of his temper, and making sure the girls never saw it, and that was that he had a hard time being the bad guy.

Keeping Maggie’s head steady, he disentangled himself from her smaller limbs. Next to them, Gillian stirred, and he put a finger to his lips, signaling for her not to wake up her sister. Gillian nodded, and Gil gently pressed Maggie up into his chest, keeping her head propped up against his shoulder.

Gillian sleepily began walking upstairs. Gil followed, Maggie still fast asleep.

They grew up so fast, but Maggie in his arms, that wasn’t too different from when she was little. Although soon she’d be too big for him to do this.

As Gillian stumbled into her room, waving a half-hearted good night, Gil walked into Maggie’ room. Gillian had done away with things from her childhood a couple years ago, excepting the soccer trophies, but Maggie still had the pale red flowery wallpaper his wife picked out. He tucked her into the sheets, and she made a little groan of protest as he laid her head on the pillow. He grabbed the little plush burro from one end of her bed and placed it under her arm. Maggie curled inwards, burying her face in the worn fluff of the donkey’s neck. Sound asleep.

Gil turned off the light and shut the door behind him on the way out.

 

Somewhere, a vase shattered and a dog started barking.

Gil forced himself to keep sleeping at first—thought maybe he dreamed it, except the dog kept barking, and he heard a scream. That started him awake, even through his exhausted stupor. He hovered, for a moment, in bleary-eyed confusion, and thought maybe he’d misheard. But the barking kept going, they usually brought him in.

That’s when he heard another scream, followed by the dull sick thunk of flesh cracking into wood. It didn’t sound right—it was the kind of noise that said something terrible had been done to someone’s body, and that they might not recover. The dog kept barking.

He flung himself out of bed and slipped on his boots. From his window, he glanced over to Albert’s place. A woman—Maribelle, it had to be—screamed again, and old reflexes from his tour in Afghanistan came back to the surface, thrilled, focused panic hot on their heels. Gil ran down the stairs, doing his best not to wake the girls.

A home invasion? It had to be. Albert and Maribelle were prone to fighting, loud screaming matches…but Gil couldn’t—or didn’t want to—believe he’d hurt her. Stumbling in the dark, he turned on a light and reached for the landline.

It had one long, steady beep.

Gil looked at the phone like it was personally offending him and jabbed at the buttons. Disconnected. He sprinted outside. Carefully shutting the sliding glass door behind him, he stumbled out into that warm, moonlit, Austin suburb that was always quiet, except tonight.

That’s when he heard the sirens in the distance. As far away as the city, it sounded like every ambulance and cop car and firetruck was out there.

He swallowed, his throat dry and dense. Something was very, very wrong.

He made for Albert’s house, through the unlocked gate connecting their yards. He saw that the front door was open, ajar, and despite himself, ran right for it, into the darkened house, thinking that he should have stopped to get his gun and then thinking again that it wouldn’t be necessary.

He stepped into the dark house.

“Albert?” he called out. “Maribelle? You all right?”

Arms emerged from the shadows like spring traps and wrapped around his shoulders as wide eyes stared up into his face. It was surreal, and startling, and he was lucky enough to recognize her.

“Maribelle,” he gasped out, hands instinctively reaching out to stabilize or comfort her, because she was shaking. Her arms were covered in blood—which he traced the source back to two nasty, circular wounds on her shoulder. “My God, Maribelle. What happened to you?”

“Shh,” she hissed, frantically, pulling at his shoulders. “Don’t. You’ll let him know we’re here.”

“Who’s him?”

“Albert,” she said, and it came out like a sob. “Gil, there’s something wrong with him.”

“Maribelle.” Gil’s chest tightened. It didn’t make sense, Albert wasn’t a bad guy—a little irritating, a little obsessed with books that always made Gil feel like a fool for not being able to sit through—but not a bad guy. He loved Maribelle. And Gil wouldn’t have thought him capable of the slightest bit of violence. Of course, he’d been wrong before. “You mean to say he did this to you?”

“Not him,” she shook her head. “It’s not him.”

There was a loud thumping noise behind them.

“No, Gil you have to get out—”

Maribelle was a small woman. She still pushed him backwards with force enough to send him tumbling over a step stool in their kitchen. His back slammed into the cabinets, and he heard something crack. Hopefully wood, hopefully not bone, even as his skull bounced off the hard wood of a drawer. It dizzied him.

Maribelle stood in the kitchen as Albert, who was still dressed in his messy business suit from the day, lunged at her. That’s when Gil got a good look at his face—wide, hungry, and in pain as he grasped at Maribelle’s arms and dragged her close, towards his mouth, like he meant to kiss her.

Albert’s teeth sank into the side of Maribelle’s neck. There was a hard crunch. She screamed, again, and this time it ended in a gargle as Albert flung her from side to side, like a coyote snapping something’s neck. The last of the arterial blood splattered around the kitchen, landing on the floor, ceiling, cabinets, and Gil. A violent splatter of blood covered his shoulder, shirt, and hair while he watched his neighbor murder his wife.

He’d seen plenty of gore, but the horror of this was in the act. He staggered to his feet.

Albert’s eyes turned on him.

Not Albert. Something so wrong with him, he’d wake up and see what he’d done and—

Gil staggered out of the kitchen, feet less stable than he’d like, eyes locked with Albert’s bloodshot eyes as he backed towards the door. As soon as he was outside, he slammed it, and bolted back for his own home. A barbeque caught his hip, making a loud clatter just as, behind him, a door splintered like it was being torn off its hinges.

He saw his own door and stepped inside, shutting it behind him again, glancing out to make sure Albert wasn’t following him. The yard was empty, so far. But his heart raced and his body was on fire. His body was used to work, but not to the frail, ragged energy—

—to panic.

Gillian was standing in the door to the kitchen, watching him with her arms wrapped around her elbows.

“What’s going on?”

“I know,” he said, then whirled around, started digging for the lock box under his computer desk. Not enough time. He wouldn’t have enough time.

He removed the gun, focusing, hands loading it quickly, efficiently, and for that he was thankful.

“Gillian, go get your sister.”

“Pa, they said…on the TV.” Her voice sounded about five years younger than she was, and Gil didn’t blame her. “Uncle Pete called.”

 “I don’t…just go gets Mags, please—”

Glass shattered and splintered across the carpet as a mass of a man in a business suit barreled through it like it was nothing. Gil backed up, his first thought to protect Gillian, put his body between anything and her.

Albert locked eyes with him again, mouth wide and feral as his bloody teeth were bared at Gil. Bits of glass stuck in his forehead, to his button up shirt and cheeks and shoulders.

Gil lifted his pistol until it was level. Maybe it would be enough to deter him. Maybe that would snap him out of whatever had taken him. He’d never wanted to shoot another person again. He didn’t want to kill his neighbor. But he would. “Don’t come any closer.”

Behind him, Gillian made a sound. Gil stepped back reflexively. The thing in his home lunged for him.

The gun cracked, illuminating the room with a bright muzzle flash and burning in, permanently, the expression of primal hunger on another man’s face, rabid mouth still full of _Maribelle_. A fountain of blood—more blood—erupted from the base of Albert’s throat, leaving a hole just over the clavicle and going out the other side. Albert’s body dropped, ragdoll, to the floor, arms still outstretched.

Behind him, Gillian backed up. “You shot him…”

Gil turned around. “Sweetheart, I know. I know I shot him. But I need you to listen.” He grabbed her shoulders, remembering how painfully precious she was to him. “We have to go. Now. Pete’s on his way but I need you to get your sister.”

Dazed, she stared back at him, shaking in his bigger arms, like he was a stranger. And his gut clenched. He let her go, fist still wrapped tightly around the gun.

He heard her thunder upstairs. They needed to get out, but where were they going to get out to? They’d join up with Pete, that was the first step, but in a disaster, he knew the roads were going to be a mess. The National Guard might even already have roadblocks up. Gil silently cursed himself, because he should have gotten out sooner. Should have seen the writing on the wall when the reports started coming in, taken the girls on a long camping trip and held out until the storm was over.

Gil wondered if he had time to wash Albert’s blood off. The girls came downstairs—wide-eyed Gillian leading a sleepy Maggie, and he decided he didn’t have time. Wherever they were going, he’d wash it off when they got there.

Bright lights flashed against the drapes, and Gil moved over to the window to check when he heard and engine in the driveway. “It’s Pete,” he said, and couldn’t hide the relief as he opened the door. The girls went out first, and he followed. He didn’t bother to lock up. He wasn’t sure they had anything that would be worth stealing. Not right then, anyway.

“Took you long enough, Mr. Favor.” Gil smiled. Perpetually unbothered, Pete stood out by his truck, and he smiled, kindly, at the girls. When Gil came out, Pete clapped him on the shoulder. Then, seeing the blood, pulled his hand back, before casually wiping it on his pants. “What happened to you?”

“My neighbor,” Gil said, voice cracking. “He attacked his wife…then he attacked me.”

Pete took in the information as the girls piled in the back seat, then he and Gil got in. “Maribelle?”

Gil shook his head. “I was too late.”

Pete turned around to check on Maggie and Gillian. “You girls all buckled up?” he asked it like their lives weren’t in danger, like they were just going for a drive. If Gil hadn’t known Pete back in Afghanistan, he maybe would have thought Pete didn’t understand the seriousness of the situation. He did. This was just how he was, and that added calm smoothed out Gil’s own uncertainty and rough edges.

Pete turned on the ignition, and started driving them out of the neighborhood that had been Gil’s home since his wife died. “Freeway’s blocked. Our best chance is to take 71 out of town. Maybe wait for this all to blow over.”

“You read my mind,” Gil said, voice hollowing out as they started on the road. He was keenly aware of Gillian’s eyes on the back of his head.

They started on the road, in the dark, the girls deathly quiet in the back seat.

“You…all right?” Pete asked.

“I will be.” Gil watched the road, half expecting Albert to run out in front of the headlights and throw his bleeding face through the windshield, maw open and ready for Gil’s own throat. “First it was just us, then it was New York, LA.”

“All it took was a few hours for the whole damn country to lose it.” Pete added. “Just folks in the city though, so far.”

“Albert worked in the city,” Gillian mumbled, and Gil saw Albert’s face in front of his pistol again.

“Sure did.” Gil settled into the passenger seat. He hadn’t had time to grab his hat.

Pete rounded the top of a hill, and needed to stop suddenly as bright red washed out their eyes as far as the eye could see. A river of tail lights stretching all the way out into the countryside.

“Well, looks like everyone had the same idea we did,” Pete admitted.

Gil motioned to the left. It was lucky they’d seen it so soon. “We can take the road out past Wish’s farm.”

With a nod, Pete veered off the paved road and started down the dirt road, driving them into an even deeper darkness and even more treacherous seeming woods. But Pete knew these roads better than anyone, and there wasn’t anyone else Gil would trust his own and—more importantly—his daughters’ safety to.

He was scared.

The thought hit him out of nowhere, as the truck hit a pothole. The catastrophe raged around them, and he was scared like he was when his wife was diagnosed with cancer. There was that clarity in the middle of all the terrible things, at least. He’d die for Maggie and Gillian—he’d get them to safety, if he had to kill or die.

When they emerged from the woods, the darkness was broken up by two things: the moon, and a bright smattering of flame as a fire gutted the old farmhouse and barn just off the road. Flames licked out of the hay loft and towards the sky, while the simple farm house was only just beginning to be consumed by the heat. The blades of the windmill turned as fire ate them, and one fell to the ground in a shower of sparks.

“My God,” Gil caught himself. “That’s Wish’s farm.”

Pete shook his head. “Think that old badger made it out?”

“Sure hope so,” Gil replied. “If he didn’t, not sure the rest of us have a chance.”

Maggie and Gillian were silent as they drove past the burning farm, and back out onto the main road. They huddled together in the back seat, and Gil watched the edges of the headlights. Damn his eyes. He still thought he’d see Albert run out in front of it, throw himself onto the hood while the hole in his neck still oozed.

That image wasn’t going away.

Pete also stayed silent for much of the drive. His eyes stayed glued to the empty road, and he definitely was leaning on the gas a little bit. Seeing Wish’s farm on fire had unsettled him, as much as anything shook Pete. Gil could tell, and it was setting him even more on edge.

Ahead, he could see the streetlights of a small commercial area. He knew it, it was the closest place to home to get groceries.

As Pete drove into the brightly lit buildings, they saw vehicles haphazardly sprawled and abandoned on the sidewalks, doors still hanging open as people ran on foot. Pedestrians spread all over the road, in huge panicked crowds. Next to him, Pete cursed as he dropped his speed down.

Gil ground his teeth. “Damn it, Pete. What’re you slowing down for?”

Pete gestured to the crowd in front of the headlights. “What do you expect me to do, run ‘em over?”

He bit back his response as Pete rounded a corner, only to see their way blocked by an enormous hemi sprawled across the road, pinning a pair of sedans to a shop front as people climbed over the makeshift barricade.

Outside, people screamed. The crowd behind them startled even more, and Gil’s blood went icy. “Pete.”

“I know.”

“Get us out of here.”

“I _know_.” Pete turned his head around to put his truck into reverse. Leaning on the horn with his other hand, he maneuvered around the panicked throng. People, they were worse than the cattle.

As he pulled out behind a building, Gil was blinded by the sight of headlights on the other side of Pete’s head. He opened his mouth to warn him, but it was too late, the car slammed into them. Glass shattered, metal screamed, and Gil’s vision went out.

 

He wasn’t out for long.

When he came to, his ears were ringing, and it was to the sight of Pete hurriedly undoing his seatbelt. In the distance, the yelling was closer. This time there was a greater sense of urgency. Someone screamed, and it was cut off suddenly.

With a sick feeling, he looked back to see Maggie huddled near the passenger side door. Her hair was messed up, and there were a couple scratches on her arm, but she was awake and looking around. To his left, Gillian—who had a cut on her brow that made Gil’s heart hurt—struggled to help Pete with his stuck seatbelt. Gil shoved the airbag aside, for all the good it had done, and pushed his shoulder against the jammed passenger side door until it creaked open. Moving the seat forward, he took Maggie by the shoulders and hefted her out of the cab. She shivered, eyes wide, face frozen.

“Maggie…” he started to say, but then Gillian called out.

“Pa, Pete’s stuck!”

He went back into the truck. With the three of them pulling on the nylon strap, it came loose. Gillian crawled out over his back. Pete, cursing again, allowed Gil to pull him out by the shoulders.

He rested Pete against a brick wall, and Pete coughed a couple times, before doubling over on his ribs. Gil inclined his eyes. “Pete, you okay?”

Pete nodded. “Sure thing. Right as rain. I just need a moment.” He had a couple cuts on his face, and Gil supposed the seatbelt might have cracked his ribs when it saved his skull. Seeing Pete sitting there, doubled over, made Gil’s head hurt, and the poisonous thought that it might all be for nothing began to creep in.

Gil looked up at the new crowd approaching the overturned semi. Their arms were outstretched, their faces pale, and mouths open.

“You don’t have one,” he said. “We’ve got to go.”

Pete saw what Gil saw, and let Gil help him to his feet. As if he’d never been injured, he took Gillian by the hand and they started away, towards the field. “We’re close to the checkpoint. It’s just over that hill on the other side of the park.”

Gil started taking off, until he noticed Maggie frozen in place.

Without thinking, he scooped her up into his arms so they could keep up with Gillian and Pete.

They wound outside of main street into the unpaved land past the parking lots. They ran away from the street and the gargling horde. Gil’s boots told him when the ground changed from hard concrete to grass and brush. He stumbled down a dry riverbed, and lost track of Pete and Gillian. Maggie’s weight offsetting him just enough to make the going difficult. He never fell, though. In the distance, floodlights and search beams lit up the sky. His lungs burned, and Maggie curled against his chest.

A blue-white light illuminated Pete and Gillian. Pete’s outstretched his arm in front of Gillian’s silhouette. Another figure stood in front of them, one that Gil could only just make out as being in uniform.

Pete’s voice. “Please, we have children with us.”

The soldier kept pointing his gun at them.

 

 

 

15 YEARS LATER

 

 

 

Gil woke up with a howl in his ears, and to Rowdy standing over him. His heart thundered in his chest, and his clothes were wet under the cheap green poncho. Droplets of water fell on the twisted metal protecting their little camp, and the background noise from the storm would keep their sound from carrying too far. The rain dampened the noises they made, and thunder masked them. On the far side of their camp, Quince was on lookout, his rifle pressed against his knee as he kept an eye on the river and the tree line.

“Hey, boss, we’re ready to move out.” Rowdy sounded hesitant, the way he did when he wasn’t sure about how firm Gil’s grip was. A few sad drips of water fell from where it pooled on his hat, and the sheer miserableness of it almost disguised how keen his eyes were, how closely he watched for Gil’s expression from under the brim. Rowdy always seemed to be doing that.

Running a hand down his face, Gil rose from his harsh sleeping spot. “Any sign of those runners from a couple nights ago?”

“Never made us.” Rowdy shook his head. “Quince says we lost ‘em just south of the train yard.”

“It was time for some good news.” They were a man short, since their hireling got bit by a clicker and ran off, the damn fool.

Gil gave the order to pack up and start heading out. Rowdy echoed him, and began dousing the weak fire. “Were you dreaming?”

Gil raised an eyebrow. “Can’t say I was.” He lied. “Why?”

“No reason.” That was the concession, the reminder that they didn’t air each other’s dirty laundry while out on a job. If Rowdy didn’t believe him, he let the lie stand, and Gil was grateful for it.

On reflex, he checked his shirt pocket for the photograph he kept, before remember that he didn’t have it. The apartment complex in the QZ was barren and cold, but that photo featured prominently in an old scavenged frame.

Gil let the rain fall on his hat. All around him, he caught the men staring at him.

He’d done honest work, back before the epidemic. He’d get up in the morning and drive to one of the rich ranches that spotted the range. He’d go to work with good men, get the cattle ready for market and get the horses ready for tourists. He never thought he’d miss it.

Smuggling wasn’t too different, it all being equal in the end.

He tapped his watch.

“Well? We won’t get to the QZ standing still. Let’s move out.”

He lifted his designated pack of goods. Rowdy took point, Quince flanked, and Gil took up their six, his rifle at the ready.

If they were careful—and a little lucky—they’d be back by nightfall.


End file.
